MomReviews

There are two things that Kaitlyn loves, and I mean loves, to do-the first is put together puzzles. She loves the chunky wood toddler puzzles, the thicker cardboard puzzles, even puzzles meant for grownups with the teeny pieces-she tries to fit the pieces together.

The other thing she loves to do is draw circles. She has a MagnaDoodle, and she draws big circles with dots inside and calls them “Happy Faces”. And she draws them all the time. But if she just has a crayon or a pen and some paper, she will still draw circles.

Which is why the Cranium Bloom “Seek & Find-Let’s Go To The Zoo” puzzle that MomCentral sent me has been her absolutely favorite, to the point of being somewhat maddening, game to play for the last few weeks.

Cranium Bloom is a new line of preschool books, toys, games, and puzzles that are designed to nurture the abilities that preschoolers are developing. Like counting, recognizing colors, drawing simple shapes, and using their fine motor skills.

The Seek & Find puzzle has 24 big, sturdy pieces that form a picture of a zoo. Then, there are 30 cards divided into two groups (easy and advanced), held together with a spiral bind at the top. On the Beginning level cards, each card has a picture of things to find-two polar bears, four parrots. It comes with a dry-erase marker, and that’s Kaitlyn’s favorite part-she gets to draw on the puzzle. It’s obvious that the makers of Cranium Bloom did their research, because a puzzle where it’s okay to scribble on it with a marker? And then it just wipes off for the next time? Genius.

We also received the Cranium Bloom “Let’s Play: Count & Cook Game”. This one is too hard for Kaitlyn right now, and my youngest son rolled his eyes when I asked him to play it with me, so for now I’ll just describe it to you. It comes with a board, 18 tokens, 4 movers (which look EXACTLY like Smurfs wearing chef’s hats, there’s even a Blue one), a recipe book, a die, and a rule sheet. The idea is to place all the tokens on the board face-up, and each one has a picture of an ingredient.

Everyone agrees on one recipe to “make”, and then using the die to move around the board, the first person to collect all of the recipe’s ingredients is the “top chef”, and gets to pull a tab on the recipe book for a surprise-an action activity like “pretend to crack an egg”, “pretend to mix up the fruit salad”, that sort of thing.

The recipes look easy and delicious and healthy, and are for foods most preschoolers will eat-hamburger, peanut butter sandwich, omelette, cookies. So even if the game is too hard, you can still have fun in the kitchen! And I bet if I told my son that I would make him the peanut butter chocolate chip cookies IF he plays the game, he’d be more than happy to play it.

Any of the products in the Cranium Bloom line would make a wonderful gift for a preschooler. I’m thinking it would also be a great item to purchase for a daycare, or even a preschool itself. I’m so happy that MomCentral included me in this review, because I’m sure I’ll be purchasing more of these products! Oh, and Cranium Bloom is sold exclusively at Target and online. Pick one up and have fun!

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